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Til RlTTfiE C^yPTOCpR: 

^ K Literal Jipplication to the Play of 
Jtlamlet of the Giplier system of 
DOJ^J^ELLy. 


S By J.““QIIiPI]N[ PyiiE, yissistanl: Editor of ihe 
gainij Paul Pioiieer Press. 




1 flc liuE fiy ^onSe, 1 met a ^cole, 

^Iten 1 tlifl lieaiiE 

ICl^E mct'lEy J^ooIe, tl^ns moiiall on tl^E timE, 
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lllfjat goolES sl^oulfl He sc iIeepe contEmplatiuE; 
^n5 1 5i3 langJi, sans intEiimission, 

Iji^iiE By f[is flialL 0!i hcBIe ^ccIe, 

5 ^ woiitl^y ^ooIe: ]VXctlEy’s tl^E cnEly wEai^E.” 

ps you niK^e iS: ii., z. 


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“ I "'HE Great Cryptogram,” the monumental 
work in which Mr. Ignatius Donnelly es¬ 
says to prove that the so-called Shakespeare .plays 
contain a cipher story, discoverable by a system 
which he has worked out with infinite labor, is 
at last in the hands of an expectant public. No 
book so thoroughly advertised has appeared for 
many a year. For months and months the eye 
has been assailed by paragraphs and pages in the 
literature of two worlds, contending for or against 
the existence in the Shakespeare plays of a cipher 
that would assign the honor of their authorship 
to Lord Bacon. It has been admitted on all sides, 
and declared by Mr. Donnelly himself, that the 
appearance of this volume would rid the world of 
a delusion forever, and stamp the successful ex¬ 
plorer of the mystery with undying fame, or write 


6 


THE LITTLE 


him down as the most daring and stupendous liter¬ 
ary fraud that all the ages have produced. The 
author has challenged the test. It is his due that 
the results of his labor should have a candid and 
impartial investigation. 

Those who are interested in knowing whether 
“The Great Cryptogram’’ is a record of discov¬ 
ery or a record of ingenious and plausible inven¬ 
tion may pass quickly over the first book of the 
volume, which deals with “The Argument,’’ be¬ 
cause in this Mr. Donnelly does not lay claim to 
originality. It is devoted to a careful and system¬ 
atic marshaling of the circumstantial evidence 
used in the past to prove that the historical Shake¬ 
speare did not write the plays commonly ascribed 
to him. There is, as every literary man knows, a 
great deal of evidence that will pass muster under 
this head. There is an inconsistency between such 
fragments of a life of Shakespeare as have come 
down to us, and the experiences and the acquire¬ 
ments which we should declare indispensable to 
the writing of that matchless drama. It is dwelt 
upon but lightly here; not because any part of 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


7 


Mr. Donnelly’s work should be slighted, but be¬ 
cause it is the cipher discovery by which he must 
stand or fall. For the same reason it. will be un¬ 
necessary to deal with the historical objections, 
equally numerous and unanswerable, to the theory 
of Baconian authorship. That Mr. Donnelly has 
made out a plausible and not unreasonable case, 
no one will deny. As a collector and editor of 
the works of others; as a curator of the museum 
in which patches and shreds of fact and theory, 
gathered from diverse sources, are to be arranged 
and classified in orderly succession, Mr. Donnelly 
is a master. His “Atlantis” and “Ragnarok” 
gave proof of a marvelous memory and a rare 
ability to dovetail disconnected and discordant 
•facts into a homogeneous whole, such as few can 
equal. Able to forget what does not accord with 
his preconceived theory, blessed with a memory 
as serviceable in dismissing as in retaining, and 
thoroughly possessed, for the time being, with a 
conviction that he is pursuing truth, he is the most 
dexterous of workmen. It is only natural, there¬ 
fore, that his cumulative evidence from history and 


8 


THE LITTLE 


fable and gossip should be well presented. He 
has browsed in the pastures of Delia Bacon and 
Judge Holmes and Appleton Morgan and Mrs. 
Potts. He has republished the best of their work, 
joining the crevices skillfully, and the reader will 
find himself entertained if not converted by this 
argument, which occupies more than half of the 
bulky volume devoted to the cryptogram. This, 
however, is a well-trodden field. These argu¬ 
ments are but a rehearsal of the clever counsel’s 
brief. Not to these, but to the Caesar of the ci¬ 
pher, has Mr. Donnelly appealed for judgment. 
To the cipher and its mathematical demonstra¬ 
tions he shall go. 

Mr. Donnelly claims that there is concealed 
in the plays not only a declaration that Bacoa 
wrote them, but a detailed history of the times. 
This is to be read by means of a word cipher, 
depending on a series of fixed numbers. The 
root numbers which he gives as the starting point 
are 505, 506, 513, 516, 523. These numbers are 
combined, at pleasure, ' with a vast number of 
“modifiers.” The latter consist of the number of 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


9 


words in a column, page or subdivision of the play- 
selected ; and of these numbers plus or minus the 
hyphenated and bracketed words. By this method 
the first two pages attacked yield him the follow¬ 
ing thirty-four “modifying” numbers : 27, 28, 29, 
30» 31, 32, 50, 51. 62, 63, 79, 80, 90. 91, 141, 142, 
167, 168, 169, 189, 208, 209, 211, 212, 218, 219, 237, 
240, 283, 284, 291, 294, 301, and 302. Counting 
forward or backward, at pleasure, from the top 
or the bottom of each page, and from the begin¬ 
ning or the end of each scene, he finds himself 
directed to the specific words that tell the tale; 
each new count supplying a new “modifier.” 
He does not tell whence he derives his root 
numbers —and the world loses little by that—be¬ 
cause he is informed by his publishers that there 
is nothing in, our law of copyright to prevent 
some ingenious fellow, less conscientious than 
himself, from studying out his whole system, 
applying it to the rest of the plays, and bursting 
upon the world with the remainder of the story, 
which Mr. Donnelly wants to reserve for a future 
volume and future profits. How well grounded 


lO 


THE LITTLE 


were his apprehensions the appearance of this 
lesser cryptogram may serve to show. Therefore 
he wraps himself in congenial mystery, and both 
his root numbers and his modifiers must be 
taken on faith. It is hard for the average man, 
at this point, to repress his scepticism, and to 
refuse straightforward treatment to a man who 
advertises for two years a great discovery and 
then reserves it for the future. There is a strong 
flavor of the Keeley motor about the process. 
But not thus unjustly shall the public deal with 
Minnesota’s gifted son. We, the people, want to 
get at the bottom of this cipher, and re-read our 
history of the Elizabethan era and its literature. 

The first step is to take an actual illustra¬ 
tion of the cipher and Mr. Donnelly’s use of it, 
in order that the public may see just how the 
thing works. The names “Shakespeare” and 
“Cecil” do not occur in the plays. To obtain 
them, Mr. Donnelly’s arithmetical process points 
him to the words “shakes” and “peere,” and to 
the other words “seas” and “illcombining the 
former he gets Shakespeare, and the latter give him 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


II 


Cecil. Now if the reader is the happy possessor 
of a copy of “The Great Cryptogram,” let him 
turn to page 718 as a base of operations. If his 
library is not so enriched, what he finds here is 
ample for purposes of illustration. This chapter 
deals with the revelations growing out of the root 
number 516, judiciously modified. There are 167 
words in the second column of page 74 of King 
Henry IV, following the subdivision made by a 
stage direction. There are 21 words in brackets, 
and one hyphenated word, making 22 in all. Add 
22 to 167, and you have 189. Subtract 189 from 
516, and you have 327. This 327 is combined 
with other numbers, derived from previous opera¬ 
tions ; the number of words on an antecedent 
page or a former column, or some of the ‘ ‘ modi¬ 
fiers ” that wait modestly till their assistance is 
needed. Out of these additions and subtractions, 

' perfectly arbitrary in their nature, comes finally 
a number which directs the searcher to a word on 
page 76. How intricate are these mathematical 
operations will be perceived only upon examina¬ 
tion. Therefore, the following, taken literally 


12 


THE LITTLE 


from pages 718, 719, is subjoined as fairly illustra 
tive of the cipher gambols : 




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CRYPTOGRAM. 


13 


Before I proceed to the obviously fair and con¬ 
clusive test of applying the same numbers and 
the same method elswhere, there are some reflec¬ 
tions to be noted, which will occur spontaneously 
to almost every reader. In the first place, the 
cipher seems, like the man who claimed that he 
never borrowed the kettle, that he had returned it 
and that it was cracked when he borrowed it, to 
prove too much. If it led directly to important 
disclosures concerning the authorship of the plays 
or historical events of the time when they were 
written, and to these alone, it might lay claim to 
credibility. But this cipher, prepared by Bacon 
to prevent Shakespeare from stealing his laurels, 
requires the appropriation of page after page to de¬ 
scribe minutely Shakespeare’s personal appearance. 
A glance at the sample printed will show how great 
the labor required to encase such a story, by mathe¬ 
matical rule, in the body of the plays. Yet this 
labor Bacon must have undergone, to tell the com- 
ing ages that “He,” Shakespeare, “is troubled 
with several dangerous diseases; he is subject to 
the gout in his great toe; and I hear moreover he 


4 


THE LITTLE 


hath fallen into a consumption.” The spectacle ol 
Bacon, holding weary vigil to complete, at infinite 
labor, the cipher story, and devoting hours to the j 
construction of a play in which the movement of j 
the plot, the fate of the perso 7 icB and the majesty 
of the dialogue should be unconsidered trifles, sub- • 
ordinated to the all-important infolded chronicle of 
the fact that Shakespeare had the gout in his great 
toe, is one for gods to weep at. Nor was this the 
limit of the Baconian genius. Complicated as is 
the work of reading this involved tale by the \ 

cipher’s help, it bears no comparison to the work l 

of incorporating originally that story in the plays. \ 
To write the Donnelly memoirs first, and then so j 
to write the dramas that each word of the one shall 5 
fit into its appropriate place in the other, by mathe- \ 
matical rule, would fall little short of miracle. 
From Archimedes to Olney, there has lived no j 

man who would dare attempt this task. Admira- ] 

tion for Bacon the dramatist, is swallowed up in 
reverence for Bacon the mathematician, whose 
equal the world has never seen. 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


15 


It was necessary, for the benefit of those un¬ 
taught in the Eleusinian mysteries wherein Mr. 
Donnelly revels, to make this exemplary statement 
of his method. Now for the crucial test that shall 
establish its genuineness. The author begs per¬ 
mission to announce that he has done some cipher 
work on his own account, following closely Mr. 
Donnelly’s instructions; and that he has made a 
discovery scarcely less interesting to a generation 
of scoffers than that of his illustrious teacher. 
Nay, nothing but modesty forbids him to claim 
first prize; for this application of the identical ci- 
ph^ is absolutely confirmatory of its worth, and 
sheds new lustre on the names of both Donnelly 
and Bacon. In studying the cryptogram, with 
the help of Mr. Donnelly’s directions, the thought 
suggested itself with overwhelming force, must 
there not be some reference in the plays to the 
cipher mystery, and some prophecy of the day 
when this riddle should be read? Fortunately, 
it happens that this inquiry need not go unan¬ 
swered. Not everyone has access to the great 
Shakespeare folio, so called, in the library of Co- 


i 6 


THE LITTLE 


lumbia College. But Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, 
New York, published last year, a reduced fac¬ 
simile of the famous first folio edition of 1623. 
In his introduction to this volume, Mr. J. O. Halli- 
well-Phillips, the eminent Shakespearian scholar 
and critic, says : “For all usual practical objects of 
study, this cheap reproduction will place its owner 
on a level with the envied possessors of the far- 
famed original.” This fac-simile of the 1623 folio, 
to which alone the cipher applies, has been- used 
in all the researches stimulated by the great cipher 
discovery. Here was the key and here the treas¬ 
ure house. Not with any desire to rob Mr. Don¬ 
nelly of future fame, but animated solely by the 
hope that his work could be proved accurate to 
the doubter, did the present writer attempt the 
task of unlocking the secret chamber of genius. 
It is with more than ordinary pride that he an¬ 
nounces a splendid and complete success, which 
silences forever all cavil as to the cipher. 

It was clear that Bacon, with his unparalleled 
keenness of intellect, must foresee that Hamlet 
would be pronounced his greatest work. That play 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


17 


would be most minutely scanned and critically 
studied. It was to Hamlet, therefore, that the 
trembling- neophyte turned as a promising field 
for exploration. Now, following everywhere the 
Donnellian method, at what part of Hamlet should 
a beginning be made? Clearly, one must look for 
something disconnected from and out of harmony 
with the rest of that magnificent drama; some¬ 
thing obviously dragged in by the breeches for 
a purpose. Glancing over this old folio, the first 
obvious interpolation appeared to be the mad 
songs of Ophelia. Here is matter senseless by 
itself. To introduce it, the writer was compelled 
to have Ophelia go mad and talk nonsense. And 
those stanzas beginning, “Then up he rose and 
donned his clothes,” are not only foolish but in¬ 
delicate. Here was a suggestion. It warranted 
an experiment. It will be remembered that one 
of Mr. Donnelly’s root numbers is 523. This mad 
song occurs on page 273 of the folio. Subtract¬ 
ing 273 from 523, we get 250. Count from the 
top of the column on that page in which the 
song is found, and the 250th word is “donned,” 


i8 


THE LITTLE 


printed thus, “don’d.” In enumerating, it is to 
be observed that “its selfe” and “to morrow” 
make, properly speaking, but one word each, and 
must be counted so. To point the student at once 
to the key word, italicized and bracketed words 
are here included in the count. Now the word 
‘ ‘don, ’ ’ occurring in ‘ ‘ Titus Andronicus, ’ ’ is printed 
“d’on,” to indicate its formation. Here the apos¬ 
trophe is omitted, as if to call attention to the 
combination of letters, “don.” This is at least 
suspicious. 

Acting upon this clue, search is made for the 
next interpolation. It is found but three pages 
further on, in the absurd grave-diggers’ scene. 
This is preceded by the direction, “Enter two 
clowns.” Now clowns do not dig graves, and 
grave-diggers are not generally clowns. It was 
clearly the intention of the writer to call special 
attention to the following lines. And the pas¬ 
sage itself contains matter which is more ridic¬ 
ulous than anything, in Ophelia’s crazy words: 
“If the man go to the water and drown himself, 
it is will he nill he, he goes; mark you that; but 




CRYPTOGRAM. 


19 


if the water come to him and drown him, he 
drowns not himself.” What rot is this which the 
great Bacon utters? There is a rat behind this 
arras. But how to get at him! We turn for 
help to the cryptogram. We find, on page 555 
of that volume, the account of Mr. Donnelly’s first 
discovery. He noted the word “Bacon,” on page 
53 of I “Henry IV.” He counted the number 
of italicized words in the first column of that page 
and found it to be 7; multiplied that number by 
the page number, and found the product 371; and, 
lo! the 371st word was “Bacon.” We go back 
to the grave-diggers. On the page where they 
are voicing idiocy, there are six italicized words 
in the first column. The number of the page is 
276. Divide 276 by 6, and the quotient is 46. 
Count upward from the bottom of the second col¬ 
umn, and the 46th word is “nill he,” so printed 
for concealment. This phrase, “will he nill he,” 
occurs nowhere else in the plays. It is here for 
a purpose. The mad song gave “Don.” The 
graveyard scene gives, by Mr. Donnelly’s process, 
closely followed, “nill he.” “Don nill he;” 


20 


THE LITTLE 


“ Donnelly.” Eureka! we are on the trail of the 
mystery, and the cipher has been at work here. 
There must be more behind. 

Now, lest anyone should entertain the injuri¬ 
ous and erroneous suspicion that this is mere bur¬ 
lesque let it be stated here that what has preceded, 
and what follows is the result, in every instance, 
of accurate mathematical work. A few of the 
Donnelly numbers, and the numbers of pages and 
of words on a page were used, and no others. 
The cipher employed is the Donnelly cipher. The 
words on every page, the italicized words, the 
bracketed words and the hyphenated words were 
counted separately and numbered. The edition 
used is the fac-simile reproduction of the 1623 
folio. Every computation has been carefully made. 
And if any reader doubts, he is requested to pro¬ 
cure a copy of the reprint, make the count and 
verify the figures for himself, and prove to him¬ 
self that the cipher discovery which follows is as 
literally worked out, as credible, as truly the work 
of Lord Bacon as anything to be found from cover 
to cover of ‘ ‘ The Great Cryptogram. ’ ’ 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


21 


Turning again to Hamlet, there is circum¬ 
stantial evidence sufficient to show that the re¬ 
markable pointing to the word “Donnelly” could 
not be a mere coincidence. For example, in the 
same column with “don,” and but a few lines 
further on, occurs the expression “most violent 
author.” Is this an accident? Again, the word 
“politician,” according to the lexicons, occurs 
not over half a dozen times in all the plays. It 
is found twice in these six pages, in intimate con¬ 
nection with the word “Donnelly;” once in the 
far-fetched expression ‘ ‘ life-rendering politician, ’ ’ 
which means nothing. Still again, popular no¬ 
menclature has designated Mr. Donnelly as ‘ ‘ The 
Sage of Nininger.” By that title he is, perhaps, 
better known throughout the Northwest than by 
his legal name. Now the word “sage” is an¬ 
other used less than half a dozen times in all the 
plays. It is found here; and found in the ex¬ 
pression, “sage requiem,” which has so puzzled 
the commentators that “sage” is omitted in many 
of the common editions. To put it here, where 
the cipher required it, the writer of this play was 


22 


THE LITTLE 


compelled to make his expression meaningless. 
It is simply impossible that this combination of 
unusual words, “Donnelly,” “politician,” “au¬ 
thor,” “sage,” all jostling each other in passages 
introduced without relevance to the play, should 
be an accident. It is deep design. Bacon, look¬ 
ing forward with more than mortal prescience, saw 
the day when his deliverer would come. And in 
anticipation of this event, he put into his greatest 
play, by means of the cipher, the prophecy that is 
now fulfilled. By one act of transcendent genius, 
he made it impossible for anyone to reject the reve¬ 
lation which his interpreter should make in the 
fulness of time. 

The cipher key furnished by Mr. Donnelly may 
now be applied to the last pages of Act IV, and 
the first of Act V, Hamlet. No attempt will be 
made to work out the whole story. That glad¬ 
some task belongs to Mr. Donnelly himself. But 
enough may be read to show the wondrous in¬ 
genuity of Lord Bacon, and to confirm in him the 
gift of prophecy. “The Great Cryptogram ” fur¬ 
nishes, as before stated, five root numbers; the 


(' 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


23 


Hamlet cipher uses but two of these, 516 and 
523. Pages 73 and 74 of King Henry IV sup¬ 
plied thirty-four “modifiers;” the Hamlet cipher 
requires but nine, all told. Three of these, 30, 
50 and 198 (the last mentioned being reserved for 
cases where the cipher-hunter falls into a hole 
and can not get out without its help) are on Mr. 
Donnelly’s list. Three more, 273, 274 and 276, 
are the numbers of the pages of Hamlet to which 
the cipher is applied most liberally. The remain¬ 
ing three, 306, 397 and 423, are the number of 
words on these three pages respectively; only 
those printed in Roman characters and not in¬ 
cluded within brackets being counted. In general, 
the system of counting adopted by Mr. Donnelly 
is followed. But the Hamlet cipher usually re¬ 
gards such forms as “’twere” and “there’s” as 
two distinct words ; while ‘ ‘ her selfe ’ ’ and ‘ ‘ to 
morrow,” as noted above, though printed without 
the hyphen, constitute but one word each. Brack¬ 
eted and italicized words are always to be omitted, 
in the enumeration, except in case of the impor¬ 
tant initial word “Don,” and the word “out;” 


24 


THE LITTLE 


and inasmuch as these themselves are found in 
italics, both bracketed and italicized words are 
included in computing their numbers on the page. 

These instructions as to the method of enu¬ 
meration being premised, particular attention is 
called to the extreme simplicity of the Hamlet 
cipher as compared with the key to Henry IV; 
which is as profusely numbered as the hairs of 
the righteous. This table shows at a glance, as 
will be seen by comparison with the following 
cipher narrative, all the numbers used in com¬ 
bination to produce the secret story which the 


author has discovered. 

Of Donnelly’s root numbers.516, 523 

Of Donnelly’s modifiers.30, 50, 198 

Page numbers from Hamlet.273, 274, 276 

Roman words, p. 273, col. 2.306 

“ “ “ 274, “ 1.397 

“ “ “ 276, “ 1.423 


By combining these in different ways, adding 
or subtracting at pleasure as Mr. Donnelly does, 
the number of italicized, bracketed and hyphen¬ 
ated words separately, and reserving the right 








CRYPTOGRAM. 


25 


which he claims liberally to increase or decrease 
the result by i arbitrarily, there is obtained in 
every case the number indicating the given word 
on each page, reading from top or bottom as the 
case may be, in its appropriate column. If there 
is anything wrong with the result, the fault must 
lie with Lord Bacon and the Great Cryptogram. 
Here is what the cipher, so amazingly simple in 
its convolutions, cries out across the centuries 
since Bacon died to the unbeliever of to-day: 



WORD 

Page 
and Col. 



250 


Don 1 

276-^“6= . 

46 

273-2 

276:2 

nill he, j 1 


523—306=217 273—217=56 + 30=86—50=36—2Z=.. 

34 ' 

273:2 

the ® 

523 — 273—250 516 — 250—266 +2Z— . 

268 

273:2 

author, 

523—306=217 274—217=57—2A= . 

55 

274:2 

politician 

523—50=473—273= . 

200 

273:2 

and 

523—397=126+276=402—50= . 

352 

276:1 

mountebahke. 

523—274=249+50=299—4 b=295—2b= . 

293 

274:1 

will 

No. words p. 274, col. 1= . 

395 

275:2 

worke 

516+50=566—273=293—30= . 

263 

273:2 

out 

523+50=573—397=176—30=146—5^= . 

141 

274:2 

the 

516 — 306=210—198=12+ IO»=. 

22 

274:1 

secret 

523—397=126—1= .. 

125 

274:2 

of 

523—274=249 306—249=57 +1 iz+1= . 

69 

274:1 

this 

516—423=93 + 50=143 -2t=i4i—I/^=I40—1= . 

139 

276:1 

play. 

523—274=249—30=219—2^—1= . 

216 

274:2 

The 

523+30=553—423= . 

130 

278:2 

Sage 

523—397=126 + 30=156—2A= . 

154 

274:2 

is 

523—274=249+5^=254—1= . 

253 

274:2 

a 

516 — 274=242+50=292+5A +1= . 

298 

274:2 

daysie. 




























26 


THE LITTLE 


The nineteenth century world may well close its 
ears to tales of Cecil’s envy and Shakespeare’s 
gout, and the wrath of the red-haired queen, to 
listen to the voice of Bacon, saying “Donnelly, 
the author, politician and mountebanke, will worke 
out the secret of this play. The Sage is a daysie. ’ ’ 
Columns might be filled in an attempt to notice 
all the ingenuities of this work. For instance, the 
bringing in of Ophelia with her flowers, her “rose¬ 
mary’ ’ and ‘ ‘ rue, ’ ’ and her ‘ ‘ pansies for thoughts, ’ ’ 
solely to introduce the quaint word “daysie;’’ in 
order that Lord Bacon might tell his opinion of 
his great discoverer and defender, in language that 
would fit the ears of this modern and slangy age. 
Nor is it possible to do more than barely mention 
that there can be no difficulty in finding the whole 
life history of Mr. Donnelly in “Hamlet” and 
other plays. No doubt the cipher, applied more 
fully to the pages already considered, would re¬ 
count his diversions in Minnesota politics. And 
he is mentioned elsewhere. In “Titus Andron- 
icus,” for example, we have “d’on,” and repeat¬ 
edly afterward, ‘ ‘ kneel. ’ ’ Still more marked is the 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


27 


reference in Henry V. A French boy is lugged 
into that play for no purpose but to jabber a 
language unfamiliar to and hated by an English 
audience of that day. His “donne,” “donner,” 
“donnerai,” are repeated, parrot-like, to weari¬ 
ness, obviously to fix attention on that prominent 
syllable, “don.” And then, but a few pages away, 
we have, “He is married to Nell Quickly;” “And 
shall my Nell keep lodgers'?” This is no accident, 
for accident is unknown to the so-called Shake¬ 
spearian drama. “Don Nell,” “Nell Quickly,” 
over and over again, are very mile-posts leading 
to the name of Donnelly, and to a cipher story that 
will reveal to the curious the inwardness of his 
career. It is no trifle to work out the cipher. To 
unearth a sentence, especially if you are at all par¬ 
ticular as to what that sentence should say, re¬ 
quires hours of the hardest labor. But labor most 
arduous will not be in vain if applied to this signifi¬ 
cant and inviting portion of Henry V, by those 
who bestow on Mr. Donnelly the same reverential 
admiration that he cherishes for Lord Bacon. 


28 


THE LITTLE 


There is, then, a cipher. And this is the re¬ 
cipe. So extraordinary was the command of lan¬ 
guage on the part of the writer of these plays, 
that a few pages of any one of them, if separated 
into single words, will give a vocabulary out ot 
which any given story can be pieced. Pick out 
the words you need to say what you desire. 
Count the number of each word from the top or 
from the bottom of its column. ' Then, having five 
root numbers, ten or a dozen modifiers, the number 
of the page and the number of words on it, also 
the number of words in italics or connected by hy¬ 
phens, you have studied addition and subtraction 
to little purpose if you can not so combine these 
various numbers that they shall furnish you, at last, 
with the number that you need to identify the 
particular word you have chosen. It is hard work. 
No wonder Mr. Donnelly covered, with figuring, a 
bundle of paper that a man can scarcely lift. The 
present writer consumed quires in a simple applica¬ 
tion of the cipher key to Hamlet. But it pays; 
whether you want to make money out of a gullible 
public, or to expose an ambitious fraud. Mr. Don- 


CRYPTOGRAM. 


29 


nelly will gather a fortune from his audacious and 
singularly successful advertisement; and neither 
friend nor generous enemy will grudge him that. 
But, out of his profits, he should erect upon the 
banks of the Mississippi, near his Nininger home, 
a statue of himself; a noble statue, with the other 
features in scholarly repose, while the mouth 
stretches into a capacious grin, and the eyes are 
fixed upon a volume in the right hand; not a copy 
of the ‘ ‘ Great Cryptogram, ’ ’ but an edition of the 
‘ ‘ Shakespeare ’ ’ plays, opened at that famous pas¬ 
sage in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,’’ which 
has been to him a steadfast rule in all his dealings 
with the world: “What fools these mortals be.” 



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